Man who avenged Bhagat Singh

Abhijeet Bhalerao is a workingclass heromdashresearching his obsessionofthemoment after midnight and writing about it on the commute What his fellow commuters on the GoregaontoCST local could not have guessed is that the Income Tax inspector was on a trail dampened and dissolved by nearly a hundred years to give several littleknown freedom fighters their dueldquoI consider my book to be part of the subaltern historyrdquo the unassuming Bhalerao tells us over a videocall from his native place Hingoli ldquoand I am interested in revolutionaries who were stabbed in the back by peers We think of the freedom struggle only in terms of us against the BritishrdquoAbhijeet Bhalerao is an Income Tax inspector and took three years to research and write his latest book that centres around the assassination of Phanindra Nath GhoshThe Man Who Avenged Bhagat Singh Penguin Random House is Bhaleraorsquos second book and is dedicated to the preprimary school teacher Baikunth Sukul from a village in Jabalpur village who was the same age as Bhagat Singh both born in 1907 Bhaleraorsquos primary passion is Maratha War strategy so what deviated him from that and steered him towards this revolutionary from the NorthldquoI fell in love with Bhagat Singh when I translated and brought to context the diary he kept while on death row in 2015rdquo says the Goregaon resident ldquoSingh wrote a total of four books while imprisoned but most of them were destroyed by the British This one that survived contained quotes from celebrated Western authors and thinkers and I guess they didnrsquot subdue it thinking he was praising their culture But why would a man awaiting death collect quotes from famous people I realised that these were code for his dream about an independent India He covered every aspectmdashwomenrsquos liberation child labour the role of farmers the economyhelliprdquoBhalerao has written the book as fiction to entice young readers but the incidents and characters are rooted in reality and only thinly veiled It covers the small incidents around this crucial hanging of the only 23yearold freedom fighter ldquoBhagat Singh surrendered after the bombing of the Assemblymdashthat was the HSRArsquos Hindustan Socialist Republican Association planrdquo says Bhalerao ldquoThe bomb was built only to cause commotion and not casualties so that he would be arrested and bring attention to the cause He also knew that the British would link him to the Saunders case the killing of assistant superintendent of police John P Saunders in 1928 but was confident they didnrsquot have any proof But his comrade Phanindra Nath Ghosh betrayed SinghrdquoGhosh was the Bihar state head of the HSRA and turned the Kingrsquos Witness in the King Emperor Vs Sukhdev Bhagat Singh and others Case ldquoIt was for money and of course personal safetyrdquo says Bhalerao ldquobut after that Ghosh turned approver in four more cases and because of him six revolutionaries were sentenced to death by hanging and around 50 more were sent to life imprisonment in the Andamansrdquo An unsuccessful attempt on Ghoshrsquos life was also made in Jalgaon Court in Maharashtra After Bhagat Singhrsquos execution pamphlets from Punjab were circulated in Bihar sneaked in through newspapers asking Daag ko dhoge ya dhovoge Will you carry this blot or dare to wash it Sukul took this as a personal insult to the Bihar state and was groomed by a relative called Yogendra Sukul who was already a HSRA revolutionary to avenge both Singh and the state ldquoMy literary agent Suhail Mathur believed in this story and helped me in every way to get it publishedrdquo says Bhalerao who took three years to write the book which will be released on December 18But how does one find out more about a hero who is not wellknown even in his own state ldquoSukul was the subject of a book by a former commissioner of IT Nand Kishore Shukla who discovered the trial documents compiled and published it The Trial of Baikunth Sukul A Revolutionary Patriot HarAnand 1999rdquo Bhalerao says explaining the arduous process ldquoI scoured the national archives CID reports accounts of revolutionaries and read every available newspaper from that era I even Googled advertisements for a particular brand of petroleum jellymdashHazeline Snowmdashpopular at that time because I read in one account that Sukul applied it to the wound of a fellow revolutionary thinking it might lead to some information about himrdquoAnother hero he found in the process was 10yearold Yashpal whose last name is lost in the annals of history His father was the editor of a newspaper called Milap and he had an elder brother Ranveer who was later hanged by the British for his revolutionary activities He was secretary of the Bal Bharat Sabha in Lahore and inspired by Bhagat Singh would rally children from his gully and attack constables He was caught in July 1930 and sentenced to one month of imprisonment but released on a bail of Rs 1000 paid by his father ldquoIn November he was caught again for hitting a constable and sentenced to three months of imprisonment and three years of rehabilitationmdashsuch was the fear he sowed in the colonisers that they felt he could grow up to be a big threat This news reached London with newspapers talking about how The Raj was not treating juveniles well A telegram was sent from the Palace ordering a CID report Meanwhile the people of Lahore gathered Rs 10000 for his bailmdashthis was a time when one tola of gold cost only Rs 18 so it was an enormous amount I want young people to know these heroesrdquoBhalerao is currently researching three other books one on the conspiracies surrounding the crash of the Kashmir Princess flight in 1955 which was chartered by Jawaharlal Nehru to carry the then premier of China Zhou Enlai With experience from his day job in ITrsquos Investigation Wing Bhalerao is sure to find more gripping evidence than what we know now